Ashen Winter (Ashfall)

and muttered, “Easy . . .”
    “It’s okay. I’m just getting dandelion leaves.” I handed the bag to Mary Sue. “They’re bitter, but they have vitamin C. That’s all I have left.”
    She pulled a leaf out of the bag and bit it. “Fresh greens. Didn’t think I’d live to taste them again. Where’d you get them?” She whispered the question, as if she were asking where I’d learned the secret nature of God, not where I’d picked up some weeds.
    “Worthington. They grow ’em in cold frames.”
    “You got any seeds?” Eli lowered his rifle. “We could make cold frames out of some of our windows.”
    “Yeah, that’s how they do it in Worthington. I don’t have any dandelion seeds, but I can do you one better. I’ve got kale seeds. Good winter variety. It can even come back from a freeze, if it isn’t too hard or too long. Four times as much vitamin C as dandelion.”
    “And where’d that miracle come from?”
    “Warren, Illinois. It’s home now, I guess. We grow kale in greenhouses.” I reached into my jacket and pulled open the bag in my pocket without taking it out. I didn’t want them to see how many packets of kale seeds I had. I slid out one envelope.
    Eli accepted the envelope I offered him. “You came all the way from Illinois?”
    “Yeah. Now can I have my weapons back?”
    Eli nodded slowly. “Brand, give the man his gun and knife, then fetch your sisters from the cellar.” He set his rifle aside and fed the fire.
    The girls were both younger than Brand. They reminded me of a bed of spring wildflowers I’d seen once after a flood. You could tell they were beautiful, even if they were beaten down and coated in filth.
    Mary Sue carefully split the dandelion leaves into five portions. I noticed that Eli got less than the kids, and Mary Sue got barely any at all. While they ate, we traded stories. I told the saga of my trip from Illinois: how we’d found the shotgun, Blue Betsy, that had spurred this crazy trip to find my parents. Losing Bikezilla in the Mississippi. I choked on my words as I told them about Darla getting shot.
    When I finished, Eli said, “Used to have a lot of trouble with the Peckerwoods ourselves. Had one visit from another gang, called ’emselves the Dirty White Boys. Haven’t seen either of them in almost two months—figured they’d run out of gas.”
    “How’d you survive a visit from the Peckerwoods?”
    “Same way we did when you came. Hid in the root cellar. Could hear ’em shouting and carousing upstairs. We keep everything important down there so we can hide at a moment’s notice. Speaking of which, we’d best post a lookout again. Alba, it’s your turn.”
    “Yes, Papi,” she said in her little girl soprano as she hurried away.
    “You’ve been down there two days? I checked the basement—I didn’t see any root cellar.”
    “We moved the furnace to block the door. And yeah, we would have stayed down there ’til you left, but one of the dang pigs got out last night.”
    “You keep pigs down there?”
    “Can’t keep ’em up here, can we? Anyone comes, that’d give us away fer sure—plus we’d lose valuable food. Anyway, I figured the stupid thing would wake you up, so we came up loaded for bear and found you all hibernatin’.”
    “How’d you keep the pigs quiet?”
    “Well we didn’t, did we? Used to feed ‘em Nyquil, but we’re out.”
    I glared at Alyssa.
    “I already said I was sorry.”
    I turned back to Eli. “You haven’t slaughtered the pigs for meat?”
    “I’m saving a few. To breed. When things start to turn around.”
    “What do you feed them?”
    “Corn and soybeans. All the farms around here are abandoned—there’s more crops left under the snow and ash than we can dig up.”
    I shook my head in amazement. Not only were they surviving, they were preparing for a posteruption future.
    Eli was staring at me in a thoughtful way. He turned toward his wife, “Y’know, we could use more hands. ’Specially if we got to try farmin’ kale.”
    “I’m not staying,” I said. “I’m going after Darla.”
    “Going up against those gangs’ll get you killed in a hurry.”
    I shrugged. Eli turned his gaze toward Alyssa.
    “She can’t stay. Not on her ownsome,” Mary Sue hissed at him.
    “I’m trying to get to Worthington,” Alyssa said.
    “We just need to get the tire on our truck changed, and we’ll be on our way. You got a jack here?”
    “Buried out in the shed, yeah. Might take days to